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Assembly Bill 2613 (Eloise Gómez Reyes, D-Grand Terrace) would have made your lower-level payroll department employees personally liable for the most unintentional wage miscalculations and added yet another layer of penalties on top of those already available for the payment of late wages, again even for minor or unintentional violations. Fortunately, the bill stalled on the Assembly Floor last week and was never taken up for a vote.

With the passage of the “House of Origin” deadline on June 1, there were several other MFG “Breaker” labor and employment bills that moved last week that threaten your competitive viability and will increase your litigation exposure:

SB 1300 (Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara) creates a new private right of action that eliminates the need to prove harm, thus allowing essentially anyoneto file a lawsuit for failure to prevent harassment and discrimination. It also establishes a new and unnecessary “bystander intervention” training that is separate and independent to the existing sexual harassment training requirement.

AB 3080 (Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego) prohibits the use of arbitration agreements as a condition of employment for private employers while retaining their use under collective bargaining agreements and contingency fee contracts for attorneys.

AB 3081 (Gonzalez Fletcher) is a sexual harassment “omnibus” bill that creates a duplicative and contradictory pathway to sue for sexual harassment and discrimination by making employers liable under the Labor Code as well as the Fair Employment and Housing Act. It also expands existing joint liability law over wage/hour and workers’ compensation to include sexual harassment claims.